This year, Santa Rosa Academy has a new elective: Journalism. Ms. Cairns is the teacher for journalism while also teaching English II and Senior Trinity Horak is this year’s editor-in-chief. Together, the SRA Press staff reviews and publishes articles for “The Lasso”, SRA’s new online student newspaper.
“The Lasso” exists as a means of bringing awareness to Santa Rosa Academy of current events, school events, members of the SRA community, and more.
In addition to the online newspaper, the SRA Press staff is also in the process of creating SRA’s first student-led podcast called “The Lasso Live”. Senior Iris Alvizar Valles and freshman Gray Lee are leading the charge of developing the new podcast which will be a platform for members of the SRA community to share their stories.
The managing editor of the A-day class, Abby Marshman, assists the majority freshman class in choosing article topics, editing writing, and assisting in developing “The Lasso” for all members of the SRA community.
The process of publishing an article in “The Lasso” is easy – first, a staffer must pitch their idea to the editors. After approval from the adviser and editors, the staffer must write the article and conduct the necessary interviews to capture student voices. There are times when the staffer may also need to take photos or request photos from the class photographers.
After the bulk of the work is finished, Ms. Cairns or Danielle Okogho, the copy editor, will review the article and suggest necessary edits. Once those edits are finished, the article gets published in “The Lasso”.
“I would say as long as you do your work and don’t slack off it’s easy but it can be hard if you don’t manage your time,” said Madison Blanco, freshman.
Students should consider taking journalism because many jobs correlate with the skills learned: time management, leadership, communication, writing, etc. Journalism is also a good choice because staffers get to write articles about real-world events and keep up with today’s news. In addition, all work produced in class is published for the world to see rather than only read by the teacher.
Madison Flores taking notes on her interview with Ellie Cobb“Journalism is a way to allow for students to gain many different skills such as communication and time management while also being a great elective that colleges love to see on applications,” said editor-in-chief, Trinity Horak.
